I'll also describe the default solution and how creating an unmanaged solution affects it. And, I'll demonstrate what happens when we export, import and delete an unmanaged solution.

I'll explain what solutions are, some of the benefits of using them and then I'll present a demo of how to create a publisher, a solution and how to add new and existing components to it.

This is why I jumped at the opportunity to discuss the wonderful world of wrestling with some BizApps community buddies on this podcast.

Huge thank you to Mark Christie and Iain Connolly for hosting. And Matt Beard and Nick Doelman for what was a highly entertaining evening.

Mark and Iain talk to the first family of Power Platform Pro-Wrestling. Nick Doelman, Matt Beard and Paddy Byrne join the podcast to talk about their passion for wrestling.  This is the longest podcast yet so enjoy

Read the recap here

Or watch the recording below.

We have to do this in two stages first upload the attachment and then relate it to the work item (user story).

First, let's start with the attached files.

The Employee Idea Files table stores these files and they reside in a column named File.

We'll get the files related to the employee idea and loop through them in the same way as we did for the comments in the previous posts - by using a List Records and an Apply to Each action.

The first action we need to do for each returned file record is to get the contents of the file field. Luckily, there is an action in the Common Data Service (Current Environment) for this called the Get File or Image Content action.

The output of this action is the content of the file in binary format.

Next, we need to upload this content as an attachment in Azure DevOps. We do this by sending an HTTP request With the following parameters -

Note in particular the numbered properties

1. The project name

2. The name of the column from the employee ideas file table

3. The output of the get file action discussed earlier converted to a base64 string (see image below)

Before moving onto the next step, you should run the Flow and take note of the output received from uploading the attachment. It will help us in the next step.

We will need the URL from the output so let's parse the JSON of the HTTP request. We can generate the schema from the output we took note of earlier.

Now that we have the URL of the attachment, we can use another HTTP request to associate it to the work item.

Note, that you must add the correct header to this request.

Now that the files are uploaded we follow the same process for the cover image. The employee ideas table stores this image in the cover image column.

It shows how we can add the question responses from the employee idea and add them as discussion comments in Azure DevOps using Power Automate.

The responses are in a separate table from the idea in the Dataverse. Fortunately, there's still a direct relationship to the idea..

With this relationship, we can use the Common Data Service (Current Environment Connector) to get the related responses using the List Records action.

We want to loop through each of the returned results and for each one set a string variable in the following format - <Instructions>: <Response Rating>.

We use the resulting string variable to populate the "Text" property of the comment.

To add each comment, we must use the 'Send an HTTP request to Azure DevOps' action of the Azure DevOps connector.

The URL we POST to is

<Project Name>/_apis/wit/workitems/<Id>comments?api-version=6.1-preview.3

Where <Project Name> is the project name in Azure DevOps and <Id> is the work item ID you created in the previous steps.

The body of the request contains just one property - the text we want to include in the comment -

{

"text": "<Text Variable>"

}

And that's it. When run, the Flow will add a comment for each question and response that is present in the Employee Ideas item.

It's a cool sample app which allows employees to submit ideas and save them to a table in the Dataverse.

But wouldn't it be better if after being saved in the Dataverse the ideas became work items in Azure DevOps? Hell yeah, it would! 

Rob Boyers, a colleague of mine had this very idea, so I helped him put it into action, and I expanded on it a bit.

Here's what I did - 

1. Create the work Item as a User Story in Azure DevOps

2. Attach the responses to the rating questions to the work item as discussion comments in Azure DevOps

3. Upload the attached files and associate them to the work item in Azure DevOps

This article and the broadcast below explains the first part - creating the work item in Azure DevOps.

This article and the broadcast below explains the first part - creating the work item in Azure DevOps.

We use Power Automate for each of these actions.

First, look at where the app saves ideas. They're in the Employee Ideas table in the Dataverse.

So, our trigger, using the Common Data Service (Current Environment Connector) will be on the creation of an employee idea. It looks like this -

Next, we use the Azure DevOps connector and select the Create a Work Item Action. We'll create a user story and populate the Title and Description from the values in the trigger response.

Then, finally, we update the employee idea with the URL and ID of the work item we created.

So, nothing too fancy in this part, but the next part, where we add the discussion comments gets a little bit more complicated.

We also had community legend Mark Smith (NZ365Guy) join us to talk about his 90-Day Mentoring Challenge

Read the recap here

Or watch the recording below.

In this session, I also decided to build my test app within Teams just for a bit of variety.

This video looks at what effect toggling the punctuationMode property has on the output of the batch transcription feature available in Azure Cognitive Services.

To do so, I'll be amending the Flow created in my session for D365UG Manchester. The session is available here - https://youtu.be/6_B0hM-iuAk.

You can also download any Flows or apps used from my GitHub repository - https://github.com/PaddyFreefall/SpeechToText

Now let’s create some Power Apps!

We'll start building a basic model-driven app followed by a canvas app. We'll look at how the two app types differ and how they complement each other.

To do so, I'll be amending the Flow created in my session for D365UG Manchester. The session is available here - https://youtu.be/6_B0hM-iuAk.

You can also download any Flows or apps used from my GitHub repository - https://github.com/PaddyFreefall/SpeechToText

In this session, I'll present my session from last weeks D365UG Manchester. It tells the story of how I overcame my fear of REST API's with the help of Power Automate and Azure Cognitive Services Speech to Text feature.

There will be quite a lot of skydiving analogies, and I'll show some tips on building and troubleshooting your Flows.